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In my last newsletter, I wrote about the countless ways to spam a person in the online world and I have also pointed out that the most popular way to spam someone else is to employ the email spamming method.
This claim is not plucked out of nowhere because it is backed by hard and fast facts from a project called the Spamhaus Project. Would it surprise you to hear that for the average ISP and network company in North America, Europe and Australasia, approximately ninety percent of emails being sent out today is spam and only ten percent of them are legitimate emails? Well, they are.
If you have a good spam control software installed, you might not notice them because the spam would have been 'captured' and placed into a specific folder designated for spam emails. The same goes for Asian countries because according to MessageLabs, a Symantec company, the rate of spamming in this part of the world is rampant as well. Here are some facts to digest.
Hong Kong - 92.3%
China - 91.1%
Malaysia - 89.0%
Vietnam - 88.7%
Singapore - 88.4%
Philippines - 88.3%
India - 88.0%
Indonesia – 87.1%
Non-Permission Email Spam
Not only is non-permission email spam common, serious and annoying, it is also insulting our intelligence. Receivers of such emails has never signed up for anything from the sender nor have they given the marketers the permission to send them these emails. And to make matters worse, non-permission email spam does not come with single or double opt-in.
The tactic is used by companies or individuals selling drugs, viagra, promoting online money-making schemes, and also online courses that are being offered in Malaysia.
Spamhaus Project listed ten worst spammers and they include names like Canadian Pharmacy, Leo Kuvakey, HerbalKing, etc.
Permission Email Spam
Compared to non-permission email spam, permission email spam is even more deplorable considering the deception involved. Recipients are persuaded to subscribe to newsletters or an online promotion on websites. And when they do, they get more than what they bargained for.
For instance, assuming that you sign up for an online newsletter for 'How to promote your blog online', you'd expect to find useful information about how to spread the word about your blog. Instead, on an everyday basis, you get sales letters and promotional materials rather than useful information that could help you promote your blog in cyber space.
These email marketers do not deliver what they have promised you when persuading you to sign up for their newsletter....and this...is permission email spam.
Why Email Spam Won't Go Away
You would think that with such low response rates, spammers will eventually give up and go away...but they won't because the cost of sending emails by bulk is ridiculously cheap.
Generally speaking, spammers have to pay less than a hundredth of a cent per recipient and according to a study done by the University of California, Berkeleu and UC San Diego, the researchers sent out three hundred and fifty million fake spam messages linking to a fake website selling pharmaceutical products. The result? Twenty eight sales. Yes, three hundred and fifty MILLION emails...resulted in twenty eight sales. That would make the response rate less than 0.00001 percent or 1 in every 12.5 million email spam sent out.
Reality is that it resulted in USD$100 per day in sale.
However, I would like to point out that a critical component was not discussed – the cost to the recipient. (not the sender)
In an effort to arrest spam, large corporations spend millions of dollars in internet capacity, unclogging the internet infrastructure and it also results in wastage of time for employees and office workers as they wade though the spam that escaped.
The success rate for spam is 0.00001% but you have every right to dislike, fight against, refuse to use and counter spam emails with 99.9999% of your mind.
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